John Ortberg Is My Dad, But Don't Call Me a PK

I've always hated the term "PK." All my life, people have felt total license to use it with my siblings and me—a knowing glance, a faked camaraderie. "You're a PK, too? Isn't it the worst/best?"

Well, yes. And no. And why are we having this conversation in the first place? We never, after all, refer to a dentist's child as a DK or the child of a homemaker as an HK. Why do the children of clergy get such special designations—and such a specific template into which they must fit?

We PKs have two choices, according to television and popular belief. Either we grow up sanctimonious, carrying the mantle of our fathers—in the mold of Martin Luther King Jr., Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, and Franklin Graham—or, we are Katy Perry or pre-conversion Jay Bakker, tattooed and seductive and rebellious and raising hell in ways specifically contrived to reject our parents' beliefs (call it the Pastor's Kids Gone Wild trend, as Jon Acuff recently did).

We have on our hands a Christian ...

1

You have reached the end of this Article Preview

To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access.